Monday, May 23, 2016

How to Lead Digital Transformation Successfully

These days, it’s not a question of if – but when – your organization will digitally transform itself. The real unknown may be how it will take place.

If the transformation is done poorly, then a company’s very survival might be at risk. But if it’s done right, then the organization may evolve into an enterprise that is more agile, more competitive and more innovative.

Much of this, of course, depends on senior leadership. Those in the C-suite will be tasked with ensuring an organization is digitally on the right track and doesn’t squander the efforts or dollars put into its transformation.

One of the best ways for senior leaders to understand how to determine the organization’s needs, create the right culture and use its resources wisely can be found in a new white paper from Knowledge@Wharton and sponsored by HCL Technologies. In the paper, experts look at the best practices of several organizations that have made successful digital transformations and lessons learned by leaders.

Minimal disruption

The digital transformation goals for Novelis, a major U.S. industrial aluminum processor, were: virtualization, elimination of data center duplication; process improvements; and a roll up of business operations.

Kenneth Benson, global IT hosting director, says the company made significant investments in the effort, such as buying new hardware and third-party service provider contracts. It also made cuts, such as closing more than 20 data centers and moving to private cloud services. This not only allowed Novelis to switch operations among data centers in an emergency, but saved $14 million in data center closings and fewer employees.

The change also has given business units greater transparency of the fees they pay for services and greater predictability in service availability. They can see more clearly where they can cut costs or be more efficient, and can predict problems with storage, servers and networking before they happen since they have real-time monitoring and performance data access.

Before the transformation, about half of the efforts by Benson’s team were focused on building the infrastructure necessary for the organization’s 40 to 50 projects a year. After the transformation, only about (read more here)

1 comment:

Infrastructure certainly a big part of the transformation, but as you point out a lot of it also come down to culture change and process redesign. These are big ticket items that will take time for large organisations. Ultimately, it all has to be driven by a rigorous approach to understanding present and future customers.